KARACHI, June 18: The Civil Hospital Karachi will stop levying user fees for various diagnostic tests from June 19, said its medical superintendent Dr Kaleem Butt on Monday.

The user fee was introduced on the recommendations of the CHK’s Poor Patients’ Aid Society about 23 years back. In the absence of a formal system for cost recovery and legislative protection, the fee was also a source of concern in maintenance of accounts and audit, said a source.

The latest resolve, too, came from the Poor Patients’ Aid Society, which met on Saturday. After discussing the matter in depth and considering the present flow of money from formal channels, including the Sindh government it was decided that different laboratories and sections should stop collecting users fee at the earliest, added the source.

The move is aimed at providing relief to about 4,200 to 4,800 patients visiting the out-patient departments or emergency and accidents sections everyday, besides around 2,000 in-house patients.

Dr Butt, who is also the general secretary of the poor patient’s society, said that patients had to pay for various laboratory tests and radiological examinations and ultrasound facilities in different wards for long. The decision to collect nominal charges from patients was implemented in 1984, with the approval of the then medical superintendent, he said.

He said that now a formal notification had been circulated and all charges, including the “purchee fee” of one rupee collected from patients in OPD for meeting the CHK’s incinerator maintenance cost would stand abolished from June 19.